#illness

I know the empathy borne of despair; I know the fluidity of thought, the expansive, even beautiful, mind that hypomania brings, and I know this is quicksilver and precious and often it's poison. There has always existed a sort of psychic butcher who works the scales of transcendence, who weighs out the bloody cost of true art. ↗

— David Lovelace

#bipolar #hypomania #manic-depression #mental-illness #art

Home was where others had to gather grace. Home was what I wanted to flee. ↗

— Jerry Pinto

#frustration #home #illness #home

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands the disease. How can you expect Cottard to be able to treat you? He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#illness #shakespeare #writers #intelligence

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed. ↗

— Gillian Flynn

#sick #women #life

As with many life-altering events, an autoimmune illness is almost guaranteed to cause you to re-evaluate your priorities. ↗

— Joan Friedlander

#chronic-illness #life

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life. [Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#chronic-pain #endometriosis #feminism #feminist #healthcare

Were she better, or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves. ↗

— John Green

#illness #sickness #starcrossed #stars #nature

His relationship with illness was flirtatious; only a particularly attractive ailment could tempt him into bed. ↗

— Sam Byers

#illness #relationship

In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable. ↗

— Kevin Alan Lee

#government #health-care #health-care-system #humanism #medical

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#mental-illness #poor #poverty #rich #society